


5: More Than Meets the Eye

by Fontainebleau



Series: Unexpected: The Captain America Papers [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Conspiracy Theories, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:00:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23654986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fontainebleau/pseuds/Fontainebleau
Summary: "Grassy" Noel the conspiracy theorist was a character inThe Pitcherscomic strip by Joe Berger and Pascal Wyse which ran in the UKGuardiannewspaper in the early 2000s - you can see some of the stripshere. It is the finest name for a conspiracy theorist ever invented.
Series: Unexpected: The Captain America Papers [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1703347
Kudos: 29
Collections: Stucky Remix 2020





	5: More Than Meets the Eye

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Seven times Steve Rogers was not what everyone expected him to be (+1 time he really, really wasn't what everyone expected him to be)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18258299) by [StuckySituation](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StuckySituation/pseuds/StuckySituation). 



**SPYWATCH: AVENGERS EPISODE 31 (recorded 5/5/2013)**

[Intro music plays]

AVERY W:  
Welcome to this week’s edition of Spywatch: Avengers, the podcast that gets you closer to Earth’s Mightiest Heroes!

[Intro music continues] 

AVERY W:  
We’re your hosts, Avery W...

ZONAROSA:...and ZonaRosa, here with another roundup of Avengers news, gossip and sightings. Later in this episode we’ll be taking an in-depth look at the recent changes to Black Widow’s uniform, and hearing about another cheese-related close encounter with an off-duty Hawkeye –

AVERY W:But first be sure to close the curtains, turn on the scrambler and put on your tinfoil hat, because our first guest is none other than ‘Grassy’ Noel Spangler, host of _The Third Eye_ website, home to the finest conspiracy theories on the net.

‘GRASSY’ NOEL:  
[indistinct] You think you’re joking about the scrambler, don’t you? You’re not even using a VPN. [mutters] Amateurs... 

AVERY W:'Grassy' Noel is here with a new take on the Captain America controversy. [Pause] Can you hear that sound? It’s our audience groaning – Noel, you’re hardly the first to come up with the idea that the story of Captain America’s reappearance is fake.

‘GRASSY’ NOEL:Of course – scepticism has a fine history, beginning with Lizardman’s blogpost from 2012, Dancing Monkey: the wholesome face of the military-industrial complex, which pointed out the obvious flaws in the story. Anyone could see it was unrealistic that SHIELD just happened to stumble across the wreck of the Valkyrie and its miraculously “unexploded” bombs, just at the moment when the left was gaining credibility; it let them create a patriotic rallying-point, conjuring up an unimpeachable ‘good guy’ fresh from fighting against Nazis, magically reappeared in the new millennium.

AVERY W:  
Yes, we’ve heard all this, and I have to warn you that most of our listeners won’t agree.

ZONAROSA:Steve Rogers may not be exactly as history remembered him, we’d be naïve to expect him to live up to the whitewash, but that he’s survived is no odder than, I don’t know, alien whales? Steve Rogers is a real hero, just like he was in the 40s.

‘GRASSY’ NOEL:I think you’ll find that’s most unlikely: ventcrawler2010 demonstrated right from the start that no one could have been thawed out successfully from that kind of temperature. Even if you believe in the ‘supersoldier serum’ and ‘vita-rays’ – and they’re no more than pulp-comic pseudo-science – the only way to avoid wholesale tissue necrotising would be to heat him so slowly he’d still be coming to in 2050.

ZONAROSA:So you believe that the man we call Steve Rogers is an actor, what did you say... oh yes, ‘prancing round doing CGI stunts, playing the part of a kid from Brooklyn.’

‘GRASSY’ NOEL:Well this is where new research has changed my mind. I used to think he was just an actor, that’s what they wanted us all to think. But the more I saw, the less it seemed to add up. This “Steve Rogers”’ speech patterns, for instance. Everyone agrees – well, everyone with a spark of awareness - that the man they have in that ludicrous outfit is a contemporary actor trained to sound like a parody wartime GI.

But I’ve taken the time to compile a catalogue of recordings of his speech – and it wasn’t easy, they obviously try to keep them suppressed – and a deep linguistic analysis shows that he’s unmistakably authentic. He’s not just a modern actor putting it on, his speech patterns map exactly to the generation of New Yorkers in the 30s and 40s.

AVERY W  
:You’re losing me. Your new conspiracy theory is that Steve Rogers actually is Steve Rogers?

‘GRASSY’ NOEL:I know you’re, what can I say... _invested_ in this, but put aside your preconceptions and think about it rationally. The story you believe is just so obviously fake, they can’t really be expecting anyone to buy it. A ‘superhero’ from the 1940s – one who’d all but fallen out of the historical record too, managing to survive the crash and the ice? They want you to think he’s a government stooge, it just took me time to see it.

ZONAROSA:  
But why would they invent something so convoluted?

‘GRASSY’ NOEL:  
Because it’s a story people will buy. Especially people like you who think the government is here to help you.

ZONAROSA:  
[muffled] Hey!

‘GRASSY’ NOEL:  
This so-called ‘Steve Rogers’ is a real person from the 1940s, and probably long before then – because he’s an immortal. 

AVERY W:  
[laughing] Say _what?_

‘GRASSY’ NOEL:  
An immortal. A human who doesn’t age. They’ve always been among us -- just look at all the stories of vampires.

AVERY W:  
You’re saying Captain America’s a _vampire_?

‘GRASSY’ NOEL:Of course not, vampires aren’t real. But some people live forever, the evidence is all there if you look for it, and it makes sense of how many records from the time were deliberately erased. In the past it was easy to switch identities, go away for a while and come back as your own son or nephew, but these days with biometric data and online records it’s getting a lot harder. So they’ve taken a new tack to soften us up, introducing the idea gradually.

AVERY W:  
[amused] And what about the other Avengers – are they all immortal too? Is Tony Stark really Howard Stark?

ZONAROSA:  
Black Widow’s not immortal – that’s just a faceli-

‘GRASSY’ NOEL:For Logic’s sake, the evidence is right in front of you. I don’t know why you’re even asking. The “Thor” character, for instance, a man from another world who claims to be fifteen hundred years old - he’s another of them, not even bothering to hide. And the ones who claim to be human - it’s interesting, isn’t it, that they’re ‘circus orphans’ or ‘child assassins’, mysterious and undocumented. OK, the Hulk may be an outlier, I’ll give you that, but—

ZONAROSA:Look – suppose for the sake of argument you’re right, that the Avengers are all immortals – why wouldn’t they just say so? Why try to hide?

‘GRASSY’ NOEL:You don’t get it. They’re a secret cabal, and their aim is to rule over us short-lives, subjugate us into an underclass. These ones are the vanguard, here to soften us up, with their save-the-world schtick and their “secret identities” and official lunchboxes to make them popular with kids. The whole ‘superheroes’ thing goes down so well – look at you, doing their work for them.

AVERY W:  
Oh, come on! We’re just a fancast—

‘GRASSY’ NOEL:You’re sheep, you and your audience, lambs to the slaughter. You’ve got to wake up! [banging noises] This our last chance to save humanity as we know it! [louder banging] They’re here!

**Author's Note:**

> "Grassy" Noel the conspiracy theorist was a character in [The Pitchers](http://www.bergerandwyse.com/pitchers) comic strip by Joe Berger and Pascal Wyse which ran in the UK _Guardian_ newspaper in the early 2000s - you can see some of the strips [here](https://www.theguardian.com/film/cartoon/2008/dec/09/the-pitchers-grassy-noel). It is the finest name for a conspiracy theorist ever invented.


End file.
